In a way it is summer wherever Murat is going. Is it that he is, in my memory, almost always wearing shorts, a rare thing to pull that off anyway in a dignified manner? Is it that he is, in my memory, rarely wearing socks in his shoes, a good thing for any man to try? Or is it that any man with a dog as big as his and on a bike as old-fashioned as his and with this gesture of total composure and calm in Berlin, this city of morons, seems so pleasantly out of place that you feel summer whatever the weather? The point is: There is something around Murat, a certain distance marked by politeness, a distinct civilness that comes with knowing how long it will be before you get home, a feeling of freedom that might be an illusion too nice not to believe in. We met him on the street, Christopher and I, I don*t remember how it started, Murat was always on his bike or walking, he was a flaneur in the classical sense, it seemed to me, and time was his companion. It was on Auguststraße and on Linienstraße and on Alte Schönhauser Straße that we met him, not so much on Münzstraße, where you don*t meet people, and not so much on Torstraße either, where you usually meet a lot of people. He was running a paper at the time called Traffic which was large and on real paper and beautiful, it had the feeling to it that there were people commited to the cause whatever it might be. He supported the 2081 endeavour. Later we passed each other in the street and greeted each other. Then 60pages happened, and now he is back, and we are glad to have him. He will travel to Istanbul, back and forth, like he did in the summer, like so many others who want to see and understand what is happening. Murat will tell us.

My mother's flag

We arrived earlier than expected. My mother walked out on the terrace, her hair still in curlers. Ah, she didn’t notice my text message that we managed to change flights. A little moment of embarrassment, when you arrive with a guest, who wasn’t introduced yet. “You’re early, way too early!”, she says with the notion of a mother, who knows her son to be rather late than early. “I won’t forgive you that one!” she says and laughs. We all laugh. A laughter is always a good introduction, isn’t it?

A laughter is also the perfect easement for people, who are used to keep their stuff under control: Get up, but more importantly make my father get up, make breakfast, make my father have breakfast, make my father take his medicine before his first bite of breakfast, and strictly before that: make him take four pills, which he inspects every day from scratch, again and again with utter care, as if he took a brand new decision about his life on each morning.

Is that his way to control what remains uncontrolled? Is her strict daily routine from early morning till late at night her way to keep control? Over the loss of control that his dementia brings along to both of them – everyday anew? Is it her way to exercise control in a country that shows you everyday how little its people are in control of things? Where people with power abuse every bit of it, commit crimes, break the constitution, ignore court decisions, as if there was no tomorrow, as if microphones and cameras were wild cards lie straight to people’s face, day by day? And do things that are beyond most people’s imagination – and they get away with it, just like that.

Since more than a decade the country’s agenda seems to be about the state gaining control: Control over the military, the police, the judiciary, the youth, schools, universities, civil organizations, women, social networks – basically every aspect of society, and first and foremost over journalists, media and social media. After the mass killing in Suruc and Ankara, after every major violent incident, the government imposed a news embargo – five times, only in 2015.

During the last 25 days, in the run up to general national elections, state controlled television channel TRT degenerated into a full-blown government propaganda outlet. This is how TRT allocated its broadcasting time to the country’s major political parties and its president, who is supposed to stay neutral, but in fact isn’t: AKP – 30 hours, RTE – 29 hours (RTE = Recep Tayyip Erdogan), CHP – 5 hours, MHP – 1 hour, HDP – 18 minutes.

It became worse: The day before, police forces with chains saws gained control over BugünTV – a former government allied, now anti-AKP turned television channel. All that happens during live news broadcasting, anchors call their colleagues from other media and report live from the occupied news room, they again report live on other television channels. The bare obviousness of this Orwellian act, the sheer demonstration of power, the perfidious usage of media appears as a powerful gesture of exercising control, and reminds how terrorists are actually using media and social networks to get their message across.

Today, October 29th, is Republic Day.

Before breakfast, my mother hangs the republic’s flag right over the table. 1923, when the republic was founded, my mother was thirteen, my father five years old. She was born as a republican native when in 1935 women obtained the active and passive right to vote. On November 1st, she will take my father, who can barely walk, and they will go to vote.

60showcase

What’s a revolution and how does it sound? What is a song and what can it do?You will find out, with our dear friend Igor Levit playing compositions of his dear friend Frederic Rzewski – for you and all our dear friends. Plus, maybe, some Beethoven.

Growing up somewhere in the middle of the second post-war generation in Germany came along with the experience that people around you more so avoided rooting their lives too much in the past, but rather tried to emancipate themselves from any sort of familiar tradition or historical burden. And, thus, the pursuit of life seemed to only happen beyond the present, never behind. Having your roots somewhere else, whatever the past might have been, seems to be different. You look back as if there might be something that you certainly wouldn’t want to loose on your way forward or ideally transform to the contemporary equivalent, and use it as an ingredient to shape your individual future. When I first met Van Bo some three years ago, he introduced himself as Prime – yes, the mighty figure from Transformers. A pseudonym he, the rhyme maker, rapper and sprayer, chose while growing up in Berlin’s traditional working class and immigration district Wedding at a time when people weren’t yet discussing whether it’s upcoming or may be never would. I still hear the sound of how he pronounced his name, with the defenceless pride of a child, a bit odd though for a grown up person I thought. But when I watched my little godson unwrapping one of his birthday gifts in London I witnessed how much of a globally relevant figure Prime actually is, and the oddness faded away. And so is Van Bo to me. There lays no contradiction between his past, when his family flew from Laos and landed in Wedding, there is no loss of the past when he explores his very own way through the present, when he, the architect, the designer, the activist constructs and builds, and – most importantly – shares his construction plans, his house and even his shoes with people who are in any sort of need, whether you call them working class, design community or just the crowd. It seems he has never lost how it felt to long for something because that might be the same as just being curious. If there is anyone I would dare to associate with the worn out word Karma, Van Bo certainly is. Google it, if you need prove, if you believe me, just stay curious about what he will share with us.

Lichtenberg Tower Hole with a Used Gin and Tonic Cup

The Tower of Lichtenberg

Dominique’s story about the FBI analyzing customer data collected by grocery stores in San Francisco in order to find traces of Iranian secret agents leads me to the question what a used Gin and Tonic cup on the tower of Lichtenberg could tell? 47 Monkeys, the Tower, a hole, Vietnamese grocery stores, 60people, a drone, Pakistani food, a broken Alfa Romeo, and across the street the former high security area of the Fahrbereitschaft of the SED Zentralkomittee with embedded contemporary art. A tricky one for the FBI.

About Gin and Tonic

Georg thinks about Gin & Tonic. I try to join with a mashed hangover brain. First of all, I resigned from Gin and Tonic a while ago after a short but disastrous period of overdosed gin consumption. The only exception was at our wonderful rainy kick-off walk over Alexanderplatz infused with Georg’s Alexanderplatz long read tasting – probably the most enjoyable scenic reading session I remember. Since ever, and particularly when approaching Alexanderplatz from Karl-Marx-Allee my wandering view sticks at this indescribably grey building, with probably hundreds of small square windows, which drives my phantasy towards darkness. A Gulag that has been forgotten to be removed. Then, with a grin that always lifts my spirit, I think of these lovely sayings: ‘Aus’m Alex wird nie was’ and ‘Spiel nicht mit den Schmuddelkindern’. These became something like a joyful imperative to me to look at many things, a key to how a society would keep its’ vitality and social mobility because life is in many ways about resilience and overcoming disrespect. It was really nice to meet the polite guys who put up the little bar to serve us Gin & Tonic after the scenic walk, and if we didn’t store ourselves in the tiny trailer box that sheltered us from the rain until the servants were ready, it would have felt a bit decadent to have us gentlewomen and men waiting to be served drinks. Vodka was New Berlin that lived up between the still standing ruins from second world war. Vodka leveraged the moneyless from a mentality of early post-war-era-austerity to a defiant yes we can. Vodka is potato. Vodka is Russia that conquered space but whose cosmonauts would still use five penny pencils instead of seven million dollar space pens which the NASA provided to their astronauts just to make notes in zero gravity. Vodka is occupy the new capital with nothing. Gin is The Empire. Tonic is the colonial emissary researcher, way too pale for the jungle, but too ambitious and curious to not find and examine the last undiscovered insect. Insects that provide the chitin which serves as the main ingredient of Tonic. Gin is the light handed gentleman standing in a club, but not the one we used to have in Berlin when dirty deeds were done dirt cheap. That’s done. I still prefer Vodka. It just brings me best through the night.

What is the weight of a sentence?

The first German politician my father showed me was a man with the same hairstyle, Helmut Schmidt. That was in the 1970s, and who could know he would become the nation’s wise old statesman, the ultimate authority of Germany, and the most popular chancellor of all times, turning 95 on December 23?

My father was born in 1928, turning 85 soon, and after slowly recuperating from a post-cancer operation in spring, the doctors diagnosed a calcification of his brain arteries, which leads to symptoms that resemble Parkinson, they call it Parkinsonism. Everything slows down: thoughts, short-term memory, his walk and talk. His physical shape has changed, except the shape of his hair, which reminds of his behavioural accuracy that takes now more and more of his time. When I was in Turkey this summer I found him old for the first time, and so I decided to stay longer than intended, working there, sharing every day life, talks and memories going back to our early years when television was ritual like the morning schedule before going to school.

The last few meters to catch the school bus leaving down the street of our house at 7:43 was tight. On some days the bus driver looked down from his seat and we had eye contact for a second before he pushed his button of power to open the door again, silently asking why this little boy is always late. Leaving bed was an agony, however, once up I was looking forward to the stand in the bathroom watching my father’s shaving procedure, and particularly his ritual of combing his slightly wet hair to create the perfect side partition on the left side of his head. With his eyes focussing the mirror, the ridge was oscillating until the first draft was shaped for first inspection, slightly bending his head left, right, up and down in front of the mirror. It took him then seven or eight attempts to finalize the procedure with a gentle tone, which I perceived as a self-acclamation, acknowledging his first skilful act of the day. Once he held my head and started dividing my hair to left and right. It didn’t work. My hair is curly.

It was on my father’s birthday, December 23, somewhen in the late 1970s, when he switched on the television: a man with bold hair, accurately done side partition, left hand side. My father said this is Helmut Schmidt, our chancellor, a Social Democrat and, with his particular humorous way, he mentioned casually, that he was born on the same day as him, but – with an ironic tone of relief in his voice – ten years earlier.

He really liked him. I think it was Schmidt’s aura of non-corruptible principles, the unbendable backbone and integrity that he liked most, and may be also his hairstyle. He was just a bit said when he heard Schmidt saying that it was a mistake to have so many Turks immigrating to Germany, but that’s another story.

Today, I wished Schmidt wouldn’t have said another thing: go see a doctor in case you have a vision.

In other words: any pleasant anticipation of the future will condemn us by the punishment to be naïve. Looking around after the German general elections it seems that all politicians and the majority of our people adopted this as principle.

Isn’t that a fatal poison, a massive mental burden when thinking about the future?